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Sheldon Richman, senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation, discusses his article “Obama Administration ‘Brainwashes’ Public on Afghanistan;” George Romney’s (Mitt’s father) courageous – but badly phrased – turn against the Vietnam War in 1967; how Lt. Col. Daniel Davis’s report on Afghanistan shows a similar “brainwashing” of the American public by the generals and MSM; the failure to make progress in three core areas in Afghanistan (Afghan government competency by 2014, decrease in violence, and a dead-end for the Taliban); why junior officers are losing faith in the war effort; and why Mitt and his many sons seem to have more important priorities than serving in the military, despite their pro-war rhetoric.

Calling for the abolition, not the reform, of public schooling. Separating School & State has become a landmark book in both libertarian and educational circles. In his column in the Financial Times, Michael Prowse wrote: “I recommend a subversive tract, Separating School & State by Sheldon Richman of the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank… . I also think that Mr. Richman is right to fear that state education undermines personal responsibility…”

Mr. Richman’s articles on population, federal disaster assistance, international trade, education, the environment, American history, foreign policy, privacy, computers, and the Middle East have appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, American Scholar, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Washington Times, Insight, Cato Policy Report, Journal of Economic Development, The Freeman, The World & I, Reason, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Middle East Policy, Liberty magazine, and other publications. He is a contributor to the Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics.

A former newspaper reporter and former senior editor at the Cato Institute, Mr. Richman is a graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia.

Nothing has changed since Sophocles stated some 2000+ years ago: "it is the merit of as general to impart good news and to conceal the truth" – of course the war in Afghanistan is going badly and is being LOST; and of course the generals are LYING.

Our war in Vietnam–I'm sorry, Afghanistan–is a criminal misadventure. President Thieu–er, uh, President Karzai–is a fraud, a corrupt tool of the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government lies to the American sheeple about Afghanistan, just as it lied about Vietnam. And, of course, our Fawning Corporate Media is a worthless shill for the Establishment.

Richman reminds us that Romney's old man, George, 'fessed up about Vietnam in 1967. He paid the price for it–he rapidly lost headway for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968, which went to Tricky Dick Nixon. But George Romney was man enough to tell the truth. Too bad his son isn't the same way regarding the U.S. Government's militarism and warmongering.

Our Government has learned well from Nazi Joseph Goebbels as he then stated about the Press: "Think of the Press as a great keyboard on which the Government plays its tune" – the Press, which is now beating the war drums for war with Iran as it did with Iraq, is complicit in the war crimes being committed by US.

VietnamWarVeteran
“Our Government has learned well from Nazi… the Press…
the Government plays its tune – the Press…
is complicit in the war crimes being committed by US.”

LIGHT
The government supplies all the information mass media uses to generate all the misinformation
and mental darkness, that locks America in confusion and darkness, but it does not control media.

The corporate rich own/fund all of mainstream media, they set the tone and orchestrate all that’s broadcast by media, but they do not control the media.

That leaves the mainstream people, the voting majority people, the 51% most educated and wealthy, actually those who own all the wealth in Empire USA. So, rich ruling class, the 25% most wealthy, surely it must be agreed that most of them not only know that over half their wealth was plundered by wars most brutal and imperialism, but eagerly orchestrated the doing of it.

And so, the 26% educated middle-class, as they would not want their babies made into body parts, how can it be said that they enriched themselves upon the misery of foreign babies and wars of plunder in ignorance? For the blood guilt of the 1.5 million war widows in Iraq left behind, does that not on the back roads of a man’s memory leave some blame behind?